medicine
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "medicine", 8-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "medicine" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "medicine" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
medicine is aEnglishnoun. It means: A substance which specifically promotes healing when ingested or consumed in some way; a pharmaceutical drug. Pronounced /ˈmɛd.ɪ.s(ɪ)n/. It ranks #1,908 in English word frequency. Often confused with Medici and medicare.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | medicine |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmɛd.ɪ.s(ɪ)n/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #1,908 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for medicine is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmɛd.ɪ.s(ɪ)n/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,908 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for medicine, with forms such as "emdicine", "mdeicine", and "medciine". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 3 confusable-pair relationships, "Medici", "medicare", "medicinal", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English medicin, from Middle French medicine, from Old French medecine, from Latin medicīna (“the healing art, medicine, a physician's shop, a remedy, medicine”), feminine of medicīnus (“of or belonging to physic or surgery, or to a physician or… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is medicine, spelled M-E-D-I-C-I-N-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A substance which specifically promotes healing when ingested or consumed in some way; a pharmaceutical drug.
- 2Any treatment or cure.
- 3The study of the cause, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease or illness.
- 4The profession and practice of physicians, including surgeons.
- 5The profession and practice of physicians, including surgeons.
- 6The profession and practice of physicians, including surgeons.
- 7Ritual magic used, as by a medicine man, to promote a desired outcome in healing, hunting, or warfare; traditional medicine.
- 8Among the Native Americans, any object supposed to give control over natural or magical forces, to act as a protective charm, or to cause healing.
- 9Black magic, superstition.
- 10A philter or love potion.
- 11A physician.
- 12Recreational drugs, especially alcoholic drinks.
Etymology
From Middle English medicin, from Middle French medicine, from Old French medecine, from Latin medicīna (“the healing art, medicine, a physician's shop, a remedy, medicine”), feminine of medicīnus (“of or belonging to physic or surgery, or to a physician or surgeon”), from medicus (“a physician, surgeon”). The extended sense of "Indigenous magic" is a calque of Ojibwe mashkiki (“medicine”) or mide (or cognates in related languages) when used in compounds such as Grand Medicine Society, medicine lodge, medicine dance, medicine bag, medicine wheel, medicine man, Medicine Line, and bad medicine or place names such as Medicine Hat, Medicine Creek, etc.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: emdicine,mdeicine,medciine,meddicine,mediccine,medicien,medicinne,medicnie,mediicne,meidcine,mmedicine
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for medicine
Misspelling Variants of "medicine"
Frequency rank: #1,908 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: